In a culture obsessed with celebrity, sportmen and women are some of the highest profile figures. We are fascinated by sport stars' lifestyles, love lives, and earning power. Sport Stars investigates the nature of contemporary sporting celebrity, examining stars' often turbulent relationships with the media, and with the sporting establishment.Through a series of case studies of sporting stars, including Diego Maradona, Michael Jordan, Venus Williams and David Beckham, contributors examine the cultural, political, economic and technological forces which combine to produce sporting celebrity, and consider the ways in which these most public of individuals inform and influence private experience.
Author(s): David Andrews
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 304
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Notes on contributors......Page 8
Introduction: sport celebrities, public culture, and private experience......Page 12
Michael Jordan: corporate sport and postmodern celebrityhood......Page 31
Excursions into otherness: understanding Dennis Rodman and the limits of subversive agency......Page 47
Andre Agassi and Generation X: reading white masculinity in 1990s' America......Page 62
America's new son: Tiger Woods and America's multiculturalism......Page 81
From ~Child's play~ to ~Party crasher~: Venus Williams, racism and professional women's tennis......Page 98
Postmodern blackness and the celebrity sports star: Ian Wright, ~race~ and English identity......Page 113
Evil genie or pure genius?: the (im)moral football and public career of Paul ~Gazza~ Gascoigne......Page 135
Punishment, redemption and celebration in the popular press: the case of David Beckham......Page 149
The spectacle of a heroic life: the case of Diego Maradona......Page 162
Gretzky Nation: Canada, crisis and Americanization......Page 175
Hideo Nomo: pioneer or defector?......Page 198
Global Hingis: flexible citizenship and the transnational celebrity......Page 212
Nyandika Maiyoro and Kipchoge Keino: transgression, colonial rhetoric and the postcolonial athlete......Page 229
Imran Khan: the road from cricket to politics......Page 242
Brian Lara: (con)testing the Caribbean imagination......Page 254
Cathy Freeman: the quest for Australian identity......Page 268
Index......Page 282
